An anthology of essays, poetry, and fiction from the 1960s.

Preface -- The sixties : a chronology -- pt. 1. Struggling to be free : the civil rights movement -- The dangerous road before Martin Luther King / James Baldwin -- Letter from a Birmingham jail / Martin Luther King, Jr. -- from Rosa Parks : my story / Rosa Parks -- from Coming of age in Mississippi / Anne Moody -- Where is the voice coming from? / Eudora Welty -- The march / Calvin Trillin -- The lonesome death of Hattie Carroll / Bob Dylan -- Ballad of Birmingham / Dudley Randall -- For the Union dead / Robert Lowell -- The ballot or the bullet / Malcolm X -- The civil rights movement : what good was it? / Alice Walker -- from Dreamer / Charles Johnson -- pt. 2. End it! And end it now! The anti-Vietnam War movement -- Original child bomb / Thomas Merton -- What's happening in America (1966) / Susan Sontag -- Life at war ; Overheard over S.E. Asia / Denise Levertov -- The teeth mother naked at last / Robert Bly -- Let sleeping dogs lie / David Lance Goines -- How to maintain a peaceful demonstration / Ann Charters -- from The armies of the night : a confrontation by the river / Norman Mailer -- from On the perimeter / Robert Chatain -- from Dispatches / Michael Herr -- The man I killed / Tim O'Brien -- from Born on the fourth of July / Ron Kovic -- Attach the water / Janice Mirikitani -- Tunnels ; Hanoi Hannah ; You and I are disappearing ; 2527th birthday of the Buddha ; Prisoners ; Nude interrogation ; Facing it / Yusef Komunyakaa -- pt. 3. Why can we not begin new? The free speech movement and beyond -- Battle of Berkeley talking blues / Dave Mandel -- Put my name down / Lee Felsenstein -- Hey Mr. Newsman / Richard Kampf -- There's a man taking names / Dan Paik -- I walked out in Berkeley / Richard Schmorleitz, Dan Paik -- from The free speech movement ; The rules of the game...when you're busted ; Wanted : hip cops / David Lance Goines -- Demonstration or spectacle as example, as communication--or how to make a march/spectacle / Allen Ginsberg -- from Hell's Angels : the dope Cabala and a wall of fire / Hunter Thompson -- Testament for my students, 1968-1969 / Kay Boyle -- Smoking dope with Thomas Pynchon : a sixties memoir / Andrew Gordon -- The police band / Donald Barthelme -- Che's last letter / Abbie Hoffman -- The coming of the purple better one / William S. Burroughs -- Yeats in the gas / Edward Sanders -- pt. 4. "I feel like I'm fixin' to die" : the counterculture movement -- I feel like I'm fixin'-to-die Rag ; Talking non-violence ; Superbird ; Janis / Country Joe McDonald -- THE little PHENOMENA / Douglas Blazek -- from Ringolevio / Emmett Grogan -- A minstrel shoe or : civil rights in a cracker barrel / R.G. Davis -- Psychedelic rock posters : history, ideas, and art / Sally Tomlinson -- The Rolling Stones--at play in the apocalypse / Michael Lydon -- New speedway boogie / Robert Hunter -- Because my father always said he was the only Indian who saw Jimi Hendrix play 'The star-spangled banner' at Woodstock / Sherman Alexie -- pt. 5. Adrift in the age of Aquarius : drugs and the movement into inner space -- Turning on the world / Timothy Leary -- The holidays at Millbrook--1966 / Diane di Prima -- from The teachings of Don Juan / Carlos Castaneda -- from House made of dawn / N. Scott Momaday -- Letters from Mexico / Ken Kesey -- Pills and shit : the drug scene / Lenny Bruce -- from The basketball diaries / Jim Carroll -- -- pt. 6. Living in the revolution : the beats and some other literary movements at the edge -- The hustings / Charles Olson -- Letters to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky, 1961-1962 / Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- Kral Majales / Allen Ginsberg -- Revolutionary letters #1, 3, 5, 8 / Diane di Prima -- Poke hole fishing after the march / Gary Snyder -- from Ghost tantras / Michael McClure -- Grandfather was queer, too / Bob Kaufman -- Visitor : Jack Kerouac in old Saybrook / John Clellon Holmes -- The Cleveland wrecking yard / Richard Brautigan -- from Notes of a dirty old man / Charles Bukowski -- pt. 7. Out of the fire : the black arts movement and the reshaping of black consciousness -- The black arts movement / Larry Neal -- from Think black 1965-1967 / Don L. Lee -- Malcolm spoke/who listened? / Haki R. Madhubuti -- The idea of ancestry / Etheridge Knight -- Conjugal visits ; A dance for Ma Rainey / Al Young -- My poem / Nikki Giovanni -- It is deep / Carolyn M. Rodgers -- Numbers, letters / Amiri Baraka -- Eldridge Cleaver--writer / Ishmael Reed -- from Soul on ice / Eldridge Cleaver -- Song ; Why they are in Europe? ; [We knew our loneliness and told it] / Allen Polite -- pt. 8. With our arms upraised : the women's movement and the sexual revolution -- from The feminine mystique / Betty Friedan -- from Sexual politics / Kate Millett -- Poem / Muriel Rukeyser -- Lady Lazarus / Sylvia Plath -- The abortion ; The addict ; The ballad of the lonely masturbator / Anne Sexton -- About marriage ; The mutes / Denise Levertov -- Belly Dancer ; Ringless / Diane Wakoski -- from How I became Hettie Jones / Hettie Jones -- from SCUM manifesto / Valerie Solanas -- A new egalitarian life style / Gloria Steinem -- pt. 9. In defense of the earth : the environmental movement -- from Silent spring / Rachel Carson -- from Wildlife in America / Peter Matthiessen -- Revolutionary letter #16 / Diane di Prima -- What you should know to be a poet ; Revolution in the revolution in the revolution ; Smokey the Bear Sutra / Gary Snyder -- Preface to Hermit poems, the bath ; [I know a man's supposed to have his hair cut short] ; [Apparently wasps] ; [I burn up the deer in my body] ; [Whenever I make a new poem] ; [Step out onto the planet] ; The song Mt. Tamalpais sings / Lew Welch -- To the unseeable animal / Wendell Berry -- The serpents of paradise / Edward Abbey -- from The way to Rainy Mountain / N. Scott Momaday -- pt. 10. Ten elegies for the sixties -- for Ernest Hemingway : Hemingway / Archibald MacLeish -- for Marilyn Monroe : from Ghost tantras, #39 / Michael McClure -- for John F. Kennedy : Kennedy blues / Eric Von Schmidt -- for Sylvia Plath : from The dream songs, #172 / John Berryman -- for Malcolm X : The sun came / Etheridge Knight -- for Martin Luther King, Jr. : Assassination / Don L. Lee -- for Robert F. Kennedy : Assassination raga / Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- for Neal Cassady : On Neal's ashes / Allen Ginsberg -- for Janis Joplin : Elegy / Marilyn Hacker -- for Jack Kerouac : Kerouac, 1922-1969 / The Harvard Crimson -- Selected bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Alphabetical list of authors and titles.